Arming the film industry (in Australia)

Found an interesting article on theatrical armourers in Australia some time ago - and I decided to share it with everyone here:

http://www.ssaa.org.au/stories/political-arming-the-film-industry.html

Excerpts on the change of gun laws affecting the industry in Australia:

"Luckily for Bromley (the armourer), he was able to get most of his firearms when gun laws were more lenient and the market much cheaper.

“Years ago, an armourer could order a Sten gun for about 30 pounds each,” he said, noting that nowadays, even if you can get those types of guns into the country, they’d probably cost you about $5000 each and be welded up and inert to meet legal requirements, making them useless to the armourer.

During the years, Bromley’s seen a lot of changes in the film armoury trade, from harsher gun laws to tighter film budgets and digitally enhanced firepower. While he thinks that some of the legal changes have been for the better, he points to the 1996 gun laws as the main reason new armourers aren’t getting into the business.

“They changed the [gun] legislation back in 1996 so now, if you need anything from overseas, you need a letter from the film company explaining why you need the guns and a letter from the Attorney-General so Customs will let them through,” he says, adding that all the guns have to be destroyed or sent back out of the country at the end of filming.

“Before, we could just bring in the firearms required, use them and leave them in stock. You can end up spending $20,000 or $30,000 on guns, bringing them into the country, and you might only get $200 return from them on the one film, as far as hiring goes - not counting my wages. That didn’t really matter before because I could keep the firearms and use them again and again, till they paid for themselves. Now I’ve got to get rid of the guns,” he says, adding that the new system is just ridiculous. “I mean, I’m allowed to keep the hundreds of firearms I’ve got now but not allowed to add one more to my collection.”

Consequently, Bromley sees the armoury game as a dying trade, because to do the job you need to have plenty of money and/or plenty of guns, along with the expertise and knowledge - as well as the correct licensing in place.

So how will the film and television industry deal with the lack of armourers in the future? “I think it’s all going to be digital special effects, done on computers,” suggests Bromley. “All they’ll need is the actor’s face and they’ll just animate everything else around him, even the guns. So, you won’t need armourers, they’ll just use ‘virtual’ firearms.”

I reckon Australia have the most ridiculous gun laws in the Western developed world (I fell victim on it as well - when I decided to return to HK I have to sell my guns back to the govt as I'm no longer eligible as an active target pistol shooter) - not only legitimate sporting shooters were affected, those who have the legitimate reasons to set up a business related to guns (namely gun dealers/theatrical armourers) are also "penalised" by the extremely ill-informed legislations (at least 2 of my close gun dealers closed down their businesses partly due to the law)...

This gun law started in 1996 because some idiot decided to mow down 36 people at Port Arthur in Tasmania.
If no one has heard of this massacre, try Googling it.

The gun lobbyists are still not happy.
And this also affected replica guns too.